Until man becomes all-wise, he will continue to make mistakes; and not least of these will be in connection with his investigations into the mysteries of Nature. It has happened more than once that he has introduced some new plant into an old land, or vice versa, and lived to thoroughly regret his action. Sometime in 1890, a generously inclined individual threw a Water Hyacinth into the St. Johns River in Florida. In the space of a few short years, that single plant had multiplied so prodigiously as to seriously impede navigation, lumbering and fishing. Jack London tells of a similiar thing that happened in Hawaii: “In the United States, in greenhouses and old-fashioned gardens, grows a potted flowering shrub called Lantana; in India dwells a very noisy and quarrelsome bird known as the Myna. Both were introduced into Hawaii--the bird to feed upon the cut-worm of a certain moth; the flower to gladden with old associations the heart of a flower-loving missionary. But the land loved the Lantana. From a small flower that grew in a pot, the Lantana took to itself feet and walked out of the pot into the missionary’s garden. Here it flourished and increased mightily in size and constitution. From over the garden wall came the love call of all Hawaii, and the Lantana responded to the call, climbed over the wall, and went a-roving and a-loving in the wild woods. “And just as the Lantana had taken to itself feet, by the seduction of its seed it added to itself the wings of the Myna, which distributed its seed over every island in the group. From a delicate, hand-manicured, potted plant of the greenhouse, it shot up into a tough, and belligerent swashbuckler a fathom tall, that marched in serried ranks over the landscape, crushing beneath it and choking to death all the sweet native grasses, shrubs and flowers. In the lower forests, it became jungle, in the open, it became jungle only more so. It was practically impenetrable to man. The cattlemen wailed and vainly fought with it. It grew faster and spread faster than they could grub it out.” Then ensued a battle royal between man and plant. The man called to his aid hosts of insect mercenaries. “Some of these predacious enemies of the Lantana ate and sucked and sapped. Others made incubators out of the stems, tunnelled and undermined the flower-clusters, hatched maggots in the hearts of the seeds, or covered the leaves with suffocating fungoid growths. Thus simultaneously attacked in front and rear and flank, above and below, inside and out, the all-conquering swashbuckler recoiled. Today, the battle is almost over, and what remains of the Lantana is putting up a sickly and losing fight. Unfortunately, one of the mercenaries has mutinied. This is the accidently introduced Mani Blight, which is now waging unholy war upon garden flowers and ornamental plants, and against which some other army of mercenaries must be turned.”